No Finish Line

I have put in hours working on my family tree and there is no finish line. How could there be. I am but one Handal of many past Handals, and many present Handals, and untold futures of Handals. As for my task, I have stacks of pictures downstairs to scan, catalog, share, and if possible put into some kind of context. I have the family trees of others to study. I have notes to take and stories to write.

I have discussed before that this journey began on Ancestry.com, and it blew wide open with the DNA test my wife gave me for Father’s Day this year. With the help of new found family members my tree came together abruptly. With the help of family is how it should be, forming ties as I find links.

I first followed the tree from me along a reasonably direct path to a man named Handal in Tiqoa in the West Bank in the late 1500’s. His son Nassar Handal moved to Bethlehem and fathered the line I am part of. After some aimless wondering and refinement of my tree, I am fleshing out the tree, adding branches, twigs, and leaves with the information I have at hand and that shared by my new relatives. For the last few weeks, I have sat hours at a time in a recliner with a lap board, at my desk, at the kitchen table. I have bent over a lineage of Handals organized by branches stemming from Nassar and have progressed to reorganizing it by generations. There are twelve or so generations to go through and record.

With my reading glasses on, my head turns left-right-left again reading the tree and copying it to levels/generations with my fountain pen and my legal pads. It has been an effort that makes me feel monk-like. My home-my monastery. My documents, ancient tomes that must be preserved the only way possible, by transcribing, by sharing. All I need to complete the image is guttering candlelight and a nondescript brown robe of rustic fabric tied at my waist by a length of cord.

Name after name I write. Names that would be familiar to anyone -Evelyn, George, Eddie, Nathalie, Frank. Mostly the names are exotic - Khalil, Jamile, Issa, Jadallah. Some even straddle the two realms: Yousef (Joseph), Yacoub (Jacob), Ibrahim (Abraham). The places of births, deaths, weddings exist as places I have seen, places I know, and places I must look up to find, to pinpoint: Brooklyn, Beit Jala, Tiqoa, Amman, San Pedro Sula, Jerusalem, Santiago, Paris, Bethlehem.

I melt into the pages of names and places and dates as I read and write. My hand and wrist are starting to ache, but it makes me smile because this should be an effort. I am to the point now that I am transcribing, re-ordering the names of those that are alive, the names of those I am older than. I have gone through the past, to the present, to looking at this vast family’s potential. I know that I am exploring only those of us who originate from Bethlehem and Nassar, and there are other ties from other regions in the Arab world. Maybe one day all these branches will connect. That is my hope. If not with me, then with some other Handal, perhaps some future unnamed Handal.

In this way, I am doing my part to add to an oral heritage. The stories both told and written that color our history. That make that history rise from pages of pictures and scribbles and stories to take on a four-dimensional image comprised of height, breadth, depth, and a time locked shadow we call our ancestors. And the best part is that I am answering questions as the disturbed dust of the past raise other questions. Questions upon questions. I now understand why question begins with quest.

Its not the Kilt on the Man, but the Man in the Kilt

My mornings have a typical routine that often starts with a blind groping for my phone to shut off the alarm. Once I am out of bed, I check my phone for calls and to find out what is going on with my friends and family on social media. Then bathing, then work. Today’s routine was thrown into shock as the first posting on my Facebook feed was this from friend and writer, Mary Ogden Fersner:

Sadly, Jeff is preparing his body and mind for end of life. Please everyone remember him as the funny, fun-loving, vibrant person he’s always been. He survived juvenile diabetes, beat kidney disease with a transplant, and a leg amputation with a positive attitude and spirit few would be able to muster. Cancer however, is a brutal foe. It has run him over like a Mack truck. This was Jeff on Plaid Night during the 2018 ShipRocked Cruise. He is my heart forever.

Jeff is my friend who except for a brunch last year, has been lost to me as so many friends by time and distance. We reconnected (as many reconnections have happened for me) through Facebook. And since Jeff is not a social media guy, I kept in touched with him through his wife, Mary, and in doing so got to know her. And though I can’t claim to know Mary well, she seems perfectly suited for Jeff, someone who can easily stand toe-to-toe with Jeff in spirit, love, and life.

Though we are both from Orangeburg, SC, I didn’t meet Jeff until I went to Clemson. My first roommate was Baxter Sowell. Baxter and I had gone to high school together. Baxter was good friends with the Fersner clan, and through him I got to know Jeff and his two fine brothers Joey and Johnny. Jeff quickly became a friend, co-conspirator, and mentor. Before I was out of school, Jeff and I shared an apartment. He was the last roommate I had in college.

Jeff (as-well-as all Fersners) is very smart. I did not know their sister well, but the three boys all earned master’s degrees in engineering. Jeff’s was in mechanical engineering and had something to do with heat transfer by radiation in a vacuum. What I remember most about it was when I would go to the bowels of Riggs Hall to visit Jeff where the laboratories are found, he would often demonstrate some of the fun things you could do with liquid nitrogen (the liquid nitrogen was required to achieve as close to a perfect vacuum as would be possible). My favorite demonstration was when Jeff would open the canister and tilt it to spill some on the floor. Briefly the liquid nitrogen would flow out like water upon the floor with a white cloud of cold about it, and before the puddle spread even an inch it was gone, evaporated. Cool.

Jeff was the first person to get me drunk. He along with other friends took me down to the Tiger Town Tavern where I was introduced to the game of quarters. Who knows how many cups of beer I had to chug, but it was enough to make the short walk back to campus a long stagger. There is no hangover like your first hangover. For this, I blame you, Jeff.

Jeff and I used to go downtown to drink, and sometimes we would stop outside the girls section of Johnstone Dorms on the way back to our rooms. With girls looking out the window into the dark of night I would do a “magic” act with Jeff accompanying me on the music, “Da DaDa Tah..Da Da DaDa Tah…” The act consisted of such feats as putting my hands behind my head, and when I pulled them back in front they would be locked together by rings formed by thumb and index finger of each hand. Once I demonstrated the unbreakable bond of those interlocked “rings”, my joined hands would go back behind my head and reappear separated! (maybe you had to be there) Some nights we would take home as much as fifty to seventy-five cents in pennies and nickels and dimes the laughing young women had tossed out the windows to us. By-the-way, I still perform those incredible acts of illusion – just for children. I don’t do it for coins, I just do it for the smiles.

At Clemson, Jeff was on the CDCC (Central Dance and Concert Committee). Through this connection, I was able to help with setting up for concerts by the likes of Stanley Jordan, and Jimmy Buffet. At the Jimmy Buffet concert, while I was onstage with Jeff moving monitors around and laying down cabling I turned to the thin early audience that had already gathered, spread and raised my arms, and yelled, “Save the whales!”

Jeff is the first diabetic I ever knew. Now I have a son-in-law and granddaughter both with type 1 like Jeff. Jeff never let diabetes get him down, and he never let it hamper him in any way I was aware of. There was a particular joke Jeff liked to play on others. As an example, I would be walking down the hall from my dorm room towards Jeff’s when he would run out into the hall with one arm flat against his side and the other wrapped around his body to hold it while yelling, “It’s stuck! It’s stuck! Help me!” all the while with a big grin on his face. When I looked at the arm he held, I would see a diabetes syringe high in the bicep flopping a little. Having seen this often, I would move to the side of him and kick him in the ass as he removed the syringe with a flare and a laugh. This is the Jeff I knew.

Jeff isn’t supposed to die. He is a friend, forever locked into my memory as one of the people that defined my all-important college years for me. And even though he will always be in my thoughts as someone unique and happy and just a little mad, he was supposed to be immortal. As my love and prayers float out to him and Mary, I hope Mary knows that my wife and I are here for her. As my friend lies in the hospital, I hope he knows I love him. I’m a bit angry at God, Jeff was supposed to be immortal.